While the coastwise trade between the colonies was still preeminently important as a means of transporting commodities, by the beginning of the eighteenth century the land routes from New York to New England, from New York across New Jersey to Philadelphia, and those radiating from Philadelphia in every direction, were coming into general use.The date of the opening of regular freight traffic between New York and Philadelphia is set by the reply of the Governor of New Jersey in 1707 to a protest against monopolies granted on one of the old widened Indian trails between Burlington and Amboy."At present," he says, "everybody is sure, ONCE A FORTNIGHT, to have an opportunity of sending any quantity of goods, great or small, at reasonable rates, without being in danger of imposition; and the sending of this wagon is so far from being a grievance or monopoly, THAT BY THIS MEANS AND NO OTHER, a trade has been carried on between Philadelphia, Burlington, Amboy, and New York, which was never known before."The long Philadelphia Road from the Lancaster region into the Valley of Virginia, by way of Wadkins on the Potomac, was used by German and Irish traders probably as early as 1700.In 1728 the people of Maryland were petitioning for a road from the ford of the Monocacy to the home of Nathan Wickham.Four years later Jost Heydt, leading an immigrant party southward, broke open a road from the York Barrens toward the Potomac two miles above Harper's Ferry.This avenue by way of the Berkeley, Staunton, Watauga, and Greenbrier regions to Tennessee and Kentucky--was the longest and most important in America during the Revolutionary period.The Virginia Assembly in 1779 appointed commissioners to view this route and to report on the advisability of making it a wagon road all the way to Kentucky.In 1795, efforts were made in Kentucky to turn the Wilderness Trail into a wagon road, and in this same year the Kentucky Legislature passed an act making the route from Crab Orchard to Cumberland Gap a wagon road thirty feet in width.
>From Pennsylvania and from Virginia commerce westward bound followed in the main the army roads hewn out by Braddock and Forbes in their campaigns against Fort Duquesne.In 1755, Braddock, marching from Alexandria by way of Fort Cumberland, had opened a passage for his artillery and wagons to Laurel Hill, near Uniontown, Pennsylvania.His force included a corps of seamen equipped with block and tackle to raise and lower his wagons in the steep inclines of the Alleghanies.Three years later, Forbes, in his careful, dogged campaign, followed a more northerly route.Advancing from Philadelphia and Carlisle, he established Fort Bedford and Fort Ligonier as bases of supply and broke a new road through the interminable forest which clothed the rugged mountain ranges.From the first there was bitter rivalry between these two routes, and the young Colonel Washington was roundly criticized by both Forbes and Bouquet, his second in command, for his partisan effort to "drive me down," as Forbes phrased it, into the Virginia or Braddock's Road.This rivalry between the two routes continued when the destruction of the French power over the roads in the interior threw open to Pennsylvania and her southern neighbors alike the lucrative trade of the Ohio country.
>From the journals of the time may be caught faint glimpses of the toils and dangers of travel through these wild hill regions.Let the traveler of today, as he follows the track that once was Braddock's Road, picture the scene of that earlier time when, in the face of every natural obstacle, the army toiled across the mountain chains.Where the earth in yonder ravine is whipped to a black froth, the engineers have thrown down the timber cut in widening the trail and have constructed a corduroy bridge, or rather a loose raft on a sea of muck.The wreck of the last wagon which tried to pass gives some additional safety to the next.
Already the stench from the horse killed in the accident deadens the heavy, heated air of the forest.The sailors, stripped to the waist, are ready with ropes and tackle to let the next wagon down the incline; the pulleys creak, the ropes groan.The horses, weak and terror-stricken, plunge and rear; in the final crash to the level the leg of the wheel horse is caught and broken; one of the soldiers shoots the animal; the traces are unbuckled; another beast is substituted.Beyond, the seamen are waiting with tackle attached to trees on the ridge above to assist the horses on the cruel upgrade--and Braddock, the deceived, maligned, misrepresented, and misjudged, creeps onward in his brave conquest of the Alleghanies in a campaign that, in spite of its military failure, deserves honorable mention among the achievements of British arms.
Everywhere, north and south, the early American road was a veritable Slough of Despond.Watery pits were to be encountered wherein horses were drowned and loads sank from sight.Frequently traffic was stopped for hours by wagons which had broken down and blocked the way.Thirteen wagons at one time were stalled on Logan's Hill on the York Road.Frightful accidents occurred in attempting to draw out loads.Jonathan Tyson, for instance, in 1792, near Philadelphia saw a horse's lower jaw torn off by the slipping of a chain.
Save in the winter, when in the northern colonies snow filled the ruts and frost built solid bridges over the streams, travel on these early roads was never safe, rapid, nor comfortable.The comparative ease of winter travel for the carriage of heavy freight and for purposes of trade and social intercourse gave the colder regions an advantage over the southern that was an important factor in the development of the country.
